Having gone through far too many hardware failures that resulted in my losing all of my documents, images, and personal information on my computer I have become quite an expert on troubleshooting and diagnosing computer problems. Through all of these trials and tribulations I have come up with a top five list of signs that may indicate that a computer is ready to have a major hardware failure of some type.
#1- Clicking noises or a noisier than normal hard drive - Modern computer hard drives are normally very quiet, and any noises heard coming from them should be cause for immediate concern. Clicking noises often indicate that the physical components of the hard drive are about to fail. If possible immediately copy all of your personal data and documents to a DVD, CD, or to network storage.
#2- Significant slow downs or intermittent freezes that go away after a few seconds- If you are working normally when suddenly the computer freezes up for a few seconds or minutes it may be the early signs of another type of hard drive failure. While some heavy duty software packages and games can cause similar problems with the system, if the problem occurs when the computer is not doing anything stressful this is another case where an immediate backup of data is called for. What may be happening is that the controlling circuitry may be failing and the hard drive is falling back to a very slow data transfer rate to compensate for it.
#3- Error checking sessions show bad sectors- On a Windows machine right click on a hard drive icon then select Properties. In the box that pops up click the Tools tab and run an error checking session. If the system says that bad sectors or other errors were found the drive may be getting ready to fail. While a few bad sectors may not be cause for alarm (especially on laptop computers that get batted around a lot) if the check shows a steadily increasing number of bad sectors back up now!
In all three of these cases there is no cure for the problems. The only thing a user can do is back up their data ahead of time and install a replacement before it goes completely bad. It is far easier to clone the information to a new drive than it is to reinstall everything once the original drive dies completely.
